UPDATE: The Cost of Political Polarization — New Data on Legislative Gridlock Following our analysis yesterday on how U.S. legislative productivity has declined amid polarization, new Congressional Research Service data shows that the 118th Congress passed only 18 substantive bills through September 2023—the lowest nine-month total since 1947. This 76-year historical comparison underscores that while partisan division has cyclically peaked before (notably during Reconstruction and the 1960s civil rights era), the current combination of ideological sorting, media fragmentation, and procedural obstruction creates structural challenges absent from those earlier periods.